1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an oven for warming food. Although not exclusively, the oven of the present invention is particularly suitable for defrosting, re-heating and/or cooking pre-cooked meals on board airplanes.
2. Background Art
Ovens of this type, comprising:
a carcass delimiting a heating chamber and equipped with, in addition to a roof and a floor, a front access door, two opposed sidewalls and a back wall; PA1 a rack acting as shelving for supports (trays, wire shelves, etc.) on which said food is placed, and provided with two opposed perforated sidewalls, said rack being placed inside said carcass so as to create two opposed lateral spaces (hereafter referred to respectively as the first and second lateral spaces) between said sidewalls of said rack and said sidewalls of said carcass; PA1 a blower unit with its intake at the center and which blows out peripherally, mounted on said back wall of said carcass; PA1 means of guiding the air blown by said blower unit for introducing said air laterally between said rack and said carcass; and PA1 means of heating said air blown by said blower unit are already known, for example, from documents British Published Patent Application No. 2,078,365 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,327. PA1 two plates which are mutually parallel and parallel to the back wall of said carcass; PA1 an at least approximately V-shaped strip, trapped between said plates and with them delimiting a convergent space which widens toward said second lateral space and communicates with the latter via its wide end; PA1 an opening made in one of said plates near the vertex of said convergent space and capable of placing the latter in communication with the central intake of said blower unit; and PA1 a diffusion shroud placed on the side of the plate that has said opening which is not the same side as said convergent space, said shroud being open in the opposite direction to said convergent space, toward said first lateral space.
In these known ovens, the air blown by the blower unit and heated by said heating means forms two parallel streams which are blown respectively toward the front in the two lateral spaces, then enter the front of the rack. They are extracted from said rack at the center by said blower unit, traveling back toward the rear. Only a small fraction of the air blown by the unit passes sideways into the rack through the perforations in its sidewalls in order to prevent air pockets.
The result of this is that the longitudinally middle part of said rack receives both hot streams and is therefore heated more than the lateral parts of said rack, which receive just one of the two streams. What is more, other streams of blown hot air enter the rack via its top and its bottom, adding their heating effect to that of the abovementioned streams.
From the foregoing, it will be readily understood that the heating of the food inside said rack cannot be uniform and that, to the contrary, it depends greatly on where said food is placed within the rack.